 No doubt during this Halloween season, you'll hear some movie or some recording that has this familiar yet eerie sound. That sound gave birth to the greatest gift from engineers to the arts, the electronic synthesizer. The synthesizer began in the 1920s with Professor Leon Theramann. In a Leningrad engineering lab, he played around with the latest technology, radio. It fascinated Theramann because radio changed electricity into sound. He brought two parts of the radio close together so they made a sound like the squeal from putting a microphone to near a speaker. This propelled him, in his own words, to give these sounds a musical soul. He built an instrument where instead of physically bringing the two parts together, the performer's body would create the squeal. He would just wave his hands in front of the instrument plucking music from the air. You've likely heard the Theramann as the instrument became known in the 1950s sci-fi classic, The Day the Earth Stood Still. But well before that, Theramann toured the world and captured headlines. The New York Times called it ether music. The Chicago Tribune said that Theramann mysteriously reproduced his music. Einstein called it as significant as when primitive man produced sound from a bow string. The instrument made quite a splash until 1938 when Theramann disappeared abruptly. Kidnapped by Soviet agents, he was sent to a labor camp until he agreed to work for the KGB. But Leon Theramann had planted a seed. In the late 1950s, a 14-year-old boy built a Theramann from plans he found in a magazine. By age 20, he began making them commercially, selling enough to pay for his engineering education. The student, Robert Mogue, used what he'd learned about electronic music from the Theramann and built in 1964 the world's first synthesizer. With Mogue's synthesizer, the child of Leon Theramann's wonderful instrument, electronic music became world famous with one of the best-selling classical albums of all time switched on Bach.